Addressing a gathering comprising representatives of business fraternity, both from India and many countries across the world at the Global Business Meet in the nation’s capital last week, the land’s Prime Minister didn’t hide his pride in saying, despite the opinion expressed in some circles that India can never become a clean country, the nation’s 135 crore people have demonstrated that it is well on its way to be totally free of garbage littered everywhere. The claim made before an international audience by none other than the nation’s Prime Minister may set the law-abiding citizens of Mysuru wondering if he ever missed visiting the city after it lost the top rank as the country’s cleanest city. Figures stated as so many hundred tonnes piling up in the city every day and reports of the civic body’s herculean effort of processing the mass into valuable end products don’t seem to have made any impression on the section of the city’s population, the real misfits of the city given their incorrigible ways of littering all sorts of garbage across the city.
Narratives describing the image of Mysuru city in particular and the erstwhile Princely State of Mysore in general during the nearly five decades of reign of Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar don’t mention, even in passing, whether the city was bugged by the garbage menace unlike the present scenario. Maybe, the then Mysureans had imbibed on their own the rewards of keeping their environs tidy. That outlook has clearly taken a beating in our times.
